I'm bring two posts together here, so hence the long quote from PhilipOHare:
In reply to:


from PhilipOHare:

Fair enough, but Apple never announced a new iPod within weeks of the first one even shipping, and the new ones didn't offer huge enhancements. Remember that the Karma hasn't even been released in UK and Europe yet! And I don't know about other countries.

I'm all for product enhancement and progress, but my point is that it that it may well prevent people from purchasing the Karma if they know an even better one is due soon. Its stopped me from buying one. It can't be good for the company in UK and Europe.

I'm very excited at the prospect of a newer, smaller, colour Karma, but it does mean that I won't get the Karma thats out now, and I bet I'm not the only person to think this. Its not riduculous logic if you think about it.



But consider this:
Apple is the worldwilde leader in mindshare amoung buyers of portable "hard disk based" music players. No-one should dispute this - its a fact as much as DNNA or anyone else may argue to point, its the current state of play [for now].

To see some comments in the media you'd think that Apple were the first and ONLY hard disk based "mp3" player in existence. [something we all know to be totally incorrect but thats the ignorance of the masses for you].

So, what to do about this situation?
Wearing your DNNA marketing department hat for a bit, here the plan you come up with:

Apple have just announced a "new" [so-so] mini-iPod - What better way to spike [affect] sales of this or any Apple portable music player product than to "leak" inside information about a newer and even better competitors product coming out "in the spring" [a really, really, vague term, that means all things to all people from end of this month or anytime up until the end of Q2 04 - i.e. late June].

This new Rio karma comes with Colour display and SD slot and probably "other features" not yet implemented in software by Rob and the team.

This "pre-announcement" won't affect sales outside North America as the existing products have not been released there yet [and now you may understand why], except for Japan, which is a much different market from elsewhere.

Inside North America [the main focus of DNNA], the critical "pre-Holiday Season" period for sales of new tech gadgets has passed, so any leak is not going to affect sales of the Karma or other products that much. If Karma wasn't a success by now, then this announcement won't affect things much. If Karma sold well up to now, then sales won't drop of the planet and there is still a few months worth of sales before the new product is out there in volumes.

If anything this will only ehance Rio's "mind share" as the average person may finally realise that Apple isn't the only game in town, and the other guys [i.e. Rio's] products may in fact be cooler than Apple and whats more the Rio products work well with Windows Pc's - the most common Pc platform in the world.

And [to steal a Gates-ism] Rios "play well with others", which is more than can be said for most of Apples products - iPods/iTunes included.

In reply to:


From Meatballman:

True that. I guess that's what NDA's are for. They're not meant to be broken.



Yeah, not unless they've been given the ok to do so. IGN is not stupid, they know not to bite [too hard] the hand that feeds them.
There may also be a "mock execution" to keep the story more believable.

But I don't think this is a serious problem - and certainly no more so than the "leak" last year of the Karma info and side-by-side with iPod photos was.